The Star of the Paris Air Show: An Emission-Free Hypersonic Jet

[hembo]

The Star of the Paris Air Show: An Emission-Free Hypersonic Jet
JUN 23 2011, 10:19 AM ET2

Boeing showed off its new plane -- and boasted about big, multi-billion-dollar orders for the coming years -- but the real star of the Paris Air Show this past weekend was the ZEHST, which stands for Zero Emission Hypersonic Transportation. It will take about 40 years to build, but the mock-up attracted a lot of visitors when it was displayed at Le Bourget Airport for the oldest and biggest air show in the world.

Seen as the heir to the Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde, the ZEHST will reach speeds of up to 3,125 mph on a mix of oxygen and hydrogen. "The project is being overseen by Airbus' parent company, EADS, based in Toulouse, France," AOL reported. "EADS expects the planes to carry roughly 100 passengers, and expects that the aircraft will be able to launch for a regular runway, omitting the 'sonic boom' noises of the Concorde."

At projects speeds, flights on the ZEHST will take only minutes. A trip from New York to London could be cut down to only about an hour; London to Istanbul, 30 minutes.

"It is not a Concorde but it looks like a Concorde, showing that aerodynamics of the 1960s were already very smart," Jean Botti, innovation and technology director of EADS, told the Daily Mail. "The plane would fly just above the atmosphere, meaning it could fly at more than 3,000 mph."

A model of the EADS Zero Emission Hypersonic Transportation, or ZHEST, passenger plane concept is shown at the 2011 Paris Air Show on June 20, 2011.

 

[hembo]

Ride on Hypersonic Plane to Cost $10,000 or More
Mike Wall, InnovationNewsDaily ContributorDate: 22 June 2011 Time: 01:38 PM ET

If you're hoping to reserve a seat aboard a proposed new hypersonic airliner's maiden voyage in 2050, you'd better start saving up now.

Tickets for a trip in the superfast jet, known as ZEHST (for Zero Emission Hypersonic Transportation), will likely cost in the neighborhood of $10,000 to $30,000 in today's dollars, according to aerospace industry experts. That hefty price tag will keep most regular folks out of the skies — a fact that perhaps doesn't bode well for ZEHST's long-term survival.

"This kind of thing would be limited to the rich business class, most likely," said Ajay Kothari, president and CEO of the aerospace engineering firm Astrox Corporation. "At least at this point in time, it's hard to make a business case" for the vehicle, he added.

L.A. to Tokyo in less than three hours

Aerospace giant EADS, which owns aircraft manufacturer Airbus, introduced the idea for ZEHST over the weekend at the Paris Air Show. The concept vehicle would be capable of flying at about four times the speed of sound, or Mach 4.

At these speeds — about twice as fast as the supersonic Concorde jets that plied the skies from 1976 until 2003 — passengers could zip from Los Angeles to Tokyo in just 2 1/2 hours.

ZEHST, which would likely seat between 50 and 100 passengers, relies on a three-part propulsion system. The jet would take off horizontally like a plane, using turbojets to climb to about 10,000 feet (3,048 meters). At that point, rockets ignite, blasting the craft steeply upward.

Ramjets would then take over, accelerating the craft to Mach 4. It would fly at an altitude of about 105,000 feet (32,000 m), compared with 35,000 feet (10,668 m) for today's commercial jetliners.

ZEHST would be fueled principally by hydrogen, which would make the vehicle more environmentally friendly than the hydrocarbon-burning jets of today. EADS officials said they envision having a ZEHST demonstrator vehicle ready to go by 2020, with commercial service starting around 2050.

An expensive ticket

Exactly how much a seat on a ZEHST flight might cost is unknown; it's tough to project such things 40 years into the future, after all. But suffice it to say that tickets won't be cheap.

"In some articles, EADS says the goal is to have ticket prices in the order of magnitude of Concorde (more or less $10,000 for a Paris-New York return ticket)," Sebastien Defoort, of the French aerospace research institute ONERA, told SPACE.com in an email interview. ONERA is involved in the ZEHST project, Defoort added.

Kothari thinks tickets will likely be even more expensive, pegging them at $15,000 to $30,000 each. Hydrogen fuel is expensive, Kothari said, and ZEHST would use a lot of it.

"And the cost of a ticket would not go down as the market improves, because the cost of fuel would still be the same," Kothari told SPACE.com. "There is nothing you can do. It just requires four to five times more fuel per mile than a subsonic plane would."

Kothari also estimated that it would cost EADS about $10 billion to develop a working ZEHST aircraft.

Not ambitious enough?

While some concept vehicles suffer from an overabundance of enthusiasm and imagination in their designers, the EADS-led team appears to have its feet planted firmly on the ground. ZEHST looks eminently doable in its stated timeframe, experts said, with no big breakthroughs needed.

"From the technological point of view, there is no reason why the concept should not be feasible," Defoort said.

Kothari agreed, saying that he thinks ZEHST would likely be capable of flying passengers much sooner than 2050, perhaps by 2030 or so. In fact, he's puzzled as to why EADS would shoot for such a far-off date to commence commercial operations.

Four decades from now, Kothari said, vehicles more advanced and capable than ZEHST will likely be flying. Reusable spaceships, for example, may be ferrying tourists to Earth orbit and back by 2030 for around $250,000 per seat, provided enough funding can be procured to develop them, he said. [10 Fantasy Spaceships Headed for Reality]

So Kothari wonders why EADS is aiming so low with ZEHST, perhaps positioning itself to miss out on a potential space tourism boom.

"They might be being conservative here," he said. "It's possible that they want to be conservative, and show that phase first before they start talking about something which is a Mach 6 or Mach 8 scramjet airplane, or something that goes to orbit for space tourism."

Still, Kothari is happy that a big name in aerospace such as EADS is bringing the discussion of hypersonic aircraft into the mainstream.

"I don't want to discourage them," he said. "Any thinking of this type, or any advancement of this type, is a positive step for the future."

 

[siegecrossbow]

This is a very cool design. Looks like it is designed to operate at the edge of space.

 

[Chogy]

It's an awesome technology, but having tons of LOX/LH2 in close proximity makes this thing as dangerous as space travel, and despite the regularity of the shuttle and Soyuz, the accident rate is always going to be rather high.

"Zero emissions" - fossil fuel is needed to liquify the oxygen and hydrogen, so while the plane emits water vapor, there is still an underlying ground-based fuel consumption.

 

[hembo]

It's an awesome technology, but having tons of LOX/LH2 in close proximity makes this thing as dangerous as space travel, and despite the regularity of the shuttle and Soyuz, the accident rate is always going to be rather high.

"Zero emissions" - fossil fuel is needed to liquify the oxygen and hydrogen, so while the plane emits water vapor, there is still an underlying ground-based fuel consumption.

Unfortunately, ppl here seem to be more interested in mud slinging then participating in healthy debate about a technology, which probably will be a trend changing technology in near future.

 

[Machoman]

Another concord.......................ready to fail again...........

 

[Safriz]

the problem with hydrogen fuel us extraction of hydrogen in the first place...

 

[GHOST RIDER]

A plane able to fly from Tokyo to London in under 2.5 hours, with smart materials that could withstand temperatures around 1,000 degrees, a reduced sonic booms footprint and minimal impact of emissions on the ozone layer? The ZEHST high speed transport concept is inspiring the imagination of thousand of aviation fans across the world. See the new extended video version of this aircraft for a bluesky future!

A prototype will be out by 2020 and the plane will be in service by 2050
EADS :: Get on board the fastest plane

 

[Akasa]

I would not be surprised if there are links between this and the DARPA FALCON project.